| First, an anecdote.
A week or so ago, a friend reached out to us on Facebook. The young fellow wanted to know about life here in Buenos Aires. What would it cost him for a week's vacation in Argentina's capital? Is it worth the visit?
Our response might have put him off...
"I'm sorry to say I cannot recommend it one way or another," we replied, in hopeless earnest.
"Which is not to say I didn't try [...] just that, upon setting myself to task, I soon found it impossible to arrive at any helpful conclusion whatsoever."
We include, for our dear reader's eyes, a fragment of the correspondence...
"First of all, ask yourself what kind of week you want here in BA. Are you a
teetotaler... or a proud boozehound? Do you plan to bring a partner... or will you
be out on the prowl every night? (Or both?) Are you a vego... or do you intend
to chomp your way through as much bife de lomo as you can get your mitts on?
"Like most major cities, you can spend as much or as little here as you wish. A
very good steak dinner - with appetizers, sides and plenty of wine - can be had
at a traditional parilla for $15 per person... or at a fancy pants joint for $100-plus.
One can sip mate in the parks for a couple of dollars every afternoon... or down
cocktails in trendy be-seen bars for $15 a drink. Or a combination of the two...
"Honestly, it's hard to tell what you ought to budget. Or, for that matter, whether
it's really worth your time at all..."
You'll notice how, within a few paragraphs, it becomes apparent just how difficult it is to plan for another person. And these frantic notes are for but one individual... someone with whom we're - to coin a phrase - "Facebook familiar"... and who, in any case, actually solicited our advice!
Now, imagine if you will, the difficulty of planning for a thousand people... or a million... or an entire nation. Moreover, imagine that you don't really "know" any of these individuals at all, at least not in any meaningful way. Most of them you have never - and will never - actually meet. How hard might that project be to organize and direct? How difficult might it be to plan, to budget and to coordinate all those diverging wants and desires and preferences?
Finally, and most importantly, imagine that the vast majority of these millions of people didn't request your advice or input in the first place. In fact, they might actually resent it!
That, in a nutshell, is the state of the State... the modus operandi of any and all government.
Here is an entity that flies blindly through the night, with or without our permission... but with each and every one of us on board for the ride nonetheless. Here, it sets the price of money... there, it determines with whom we may contract and at what rate. And over there, it decides who may practice which business and what price it must pay for the privilege.
And in many cases, the state claims a right to monopoly on what it decides to be "essential services." So "essential" are these services, you will notice, that consumers must be forced to use them. No competition allowed!
This very morning, for instance, more than 22 million government workers - at the federal, state and local levels - drove to work... or called in sick. That number doesn't even take into account government contractors... a calculation that could easily double or triple the net figure.
What are all these people doing, we wonder. What are they not doing?
The 22 million "workforce" includes almost a quarter of a million people working in "Transit." Are these the same people who ensure Amtrak never runs on time or meets a budget? The rickety old train system loses in excess of $1 billion per year... including $70 million on food and beverages alone!
So why is Amtrak not out of business? Why hasn't another enterprising young company swooped in to buy up its bankrupt assets, turned the place around and made a go of actually running a profitable business? Why must taxpayers - many of whom will never even set foot on an Amtrak platform - be forced to subsidize this economic train wreck?
And that's just one tiny sliver... an iota... a mere jot of the beastly apparatus.
The federal payroll alone sustains more than 600,000 United States Postal Service workers. Last year, this crack squad of go-getters posted a record loss: $5 billion. And they probably lost a letter or two along the way.
Why is the USPS still in business? Snail mail is clearly the Blockbuster Inc. of correspondence. Why hasn't an entrepreneurial startup come in to disrupt the system... to clean house... to offer consumers better service at lower prices?
Actually, a couple of spritely lads, Evan Baehr and Will Davis, set out to do just that last year. (You can read their fascinating story here.) Their mobile phone app, called Outbox, promised to revolutionize the postal game. A $5 per month (optional) subscription service, Outbox would digitalize your physical mail, scanning important documents and giving you the option to discard unwanted junk mail.
In their own words, the pair "hoped to partner with USPS to provide an alternative to the physical delivery of postal mail to a subset of users, hoping this would spur further innovation and cost savings."
The idea drew attention from Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including Peter Thiel (one of the major backers of Facebook and PayPal).
Eventually, the eager youngsters scored a meeting with the postmaster general himself... who promptly put the kibosh on the idea. Rather than saving costs, it appears the General was more concerned with saving his own bacon. As Evan and Will describe the encounter, "This 30-minute meeting was the end of our business model."
Again, a billion here and a few billion there is nothing when we're talking government finances. The racket has been going on for so long that total debts now run into the tens of trillions of dollars, with trillions more added every year.
The real travesty, of course, is not measured in cardboard pizzas on Amtrak rides or the threat of no more USPS delivery on Saturdays. It's in the ongoing abortion of free market solutions that perish before they ever got the chance to crawl toward viability.
Protected from competition and blind to the signals of price and profit, the government can't possibly know what millions of market participants want... still less provide it.
When the operation calls for a scalpel, the government arrives with a chainsaw. The results are exactly what you'd bloody expect.
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
for Free Market Café |
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